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NBA stars have had some incredible nicknames throughout the years. Names like “King James,” “The Greek Freak,” “The Round Mound of Rebound,”Shaq,” and even “The Beard,” there are some notable nicknames that you will immediately recognize. But as it turns out, none of these nicknames are as incredible as the nicknames NBA stars receive from Chinese fans on the internet.
Nick Kapur, who is a historian of Japan and East Asia, blessed Twitter with an incredible thread this week that unveiled some of the nicknames the Chinese basketball fans have been using for their favorite players.
Some are hilarious, others are flat-out rude, and then there are a handful of NSFW ones.
“China is crazy for the NBA, but official sources use boring phonetic transcriptions, failing to take advantage of Chinese characters having both sound and meaning,” Kapur wrote on Twitter. “Chinese netizens have ‘improved’ on these official names.”
Let’s take a look at some of the best.
LeBron James
Lebron James – 小皇帝 “The Little Emperor”
A play on the English “King James” that is also a slang term for a “spoiled only child” under China’s “One Child Policy”
Used more when Lebron was young but now mostly by Lebron haters. His fans prefer 詹皇 (Zhan Wang or “King James”).
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Stephen Curry — yikes!
Steph Curry – 库昊 “fucks the sky”
This is an extremely elaborate pun. One of Curry’s phonetic names is 库里 (ku li) and the second character is a combination of the characters 日 (“sun”) and 土 (“ground”). But 日 is also slang for “fuck.” 1/3— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Given Curry’s penchant for launching shots into the sky, Chinese netizens apparently felt it would be more apropos to name him “fucks the sky” instead of “fucks the ground,” so they replaced “earth” (土) with “sky” (天) in the second character. 2/3
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Other common nicknames for Steph Curry include “Sprout God” (萌神) and “The Elementary School Student” (小学生), both playing on his diminutive stature. 3/3
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 7, 2018
Giannis Antetokounmpo
https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/993529793281974272
Charles Barkley
Manu Ginobili
Kobe Bryant
https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/993533049378934784
